


McJocelyn

by theslashbunny (theplotbunny)



Series: Team McCoy: Relationship Origin Stories [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 01:36:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10583697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theplotbunny/pseuds/theslashbunny
Summary: Leonard thought he knew where his future was going. It was planned out already that he'd go to medical school and follow in his father's footsteps and eventually take over his practice. Helping his grandmother with her ballroom dance classes had not originally been part of the plan, but Leonard never would have guessed how much it would affect the rest of his life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> As some of you know, I was a member of Team McCoy during the 2011 Ship Olympics over at st_respect. For the second event, the prompt was: "Origin Stories. Tell us how your ship came to be." Since we were a multi-ship team, we decided to do a 5+1 format with a different pairing for each section. cookiechris80 wrote the intro and closing, smokiquartz wrote McPike, our captain redtapestry wrote McUhura, and buhnebeest wrote the +1 of McCoy and his daughter. I ended up writing Leonard and Jocelyn, McChapel and McChekov. I'll be posting all three of my origin stories here. If I can find the others, I'd love to link to them here, so I'll see if I can find them on AO3.
> 
> Note: I’m using the first name of McCoy’s ex-wife as established in a licensed Star Trek novel, but not her last name nor the past that was established for them in said licensed Star Trek novel.

When you grow up in a small town, everyone knows who you are, especially when you’re the only child of the town’s only doctor and the only son in a family that’s lived there for over two centuries. Everyone knew that the polite, serious-minded son of David McCoy would follow his daddy into medicine, his bright mind helping him to become a brilliant doctor, just like they knew that he got his blunt way of speaking and his suffer-no-fools attitude from his Harris mother. One would think that in such a small town, Leonard Horatio McCoy would know everyone else as well. But quiet, studious children have a tendency to skip out on some of the more social aspects in life, choosing instead - as Leonard often did while growing up - to spend time alone or with adults instead of in the company of their peers. His focused attitude and appreciation for efficiency and learning would serve him well in the medical career and was thus encouraged. But during this time, he failed to meet someone who would change his outlook on life forever and it wasn’t until the summer after his sophomore year of high school that his grandmother informed him that his presence would be required at the weekly class in which she’d been teaching the “social graces” for the past thirty years. Her pupils would be learning how to dance and they were short one lead.

He and his grandmother weren’t exactly close, but as the only grandson of Katherine Emerson McCoy, he’d been receiving his own lessons on the proper behavior of a southern gentleman since he’d been born. He’d learned to dance before he’d learned to ride a bicycle. And as he’d found out shortly after learning to speak, one does not say “no” to Katherine Emerson McCoy.

So a sixteen-year-old Leonard found himself standing in his grandmother’s parlor one sunny Saturday morning, collared shirt and chinos clean and pressed, being introduced to his dancing partner and the girl who would change the rest of his life: Jocelyn Olivia Cartwright. The fifteen-year-old Miss Cartwright was also from an old Georgia family. The Cartwrights had been in Georgia even longer than the McCoys and she was the only girl and the youngest child in a house full of boys. Her family was to law, what the McCoys were to medicine; every generation sent at least one child into the family business. Her oldest brother was already a lawyer, her daddy was a lawyer and her grandfather was a lawyer, just like Leonard would be following in a long line of physicians. Jocelyn, too, would one day join the family business, but that was less than obvious as she looked demurely yet primly up at him from her place at his grandmother’s side. Who could have guessed that this mere slip of a girl, this brunette with carefully curled hair wearing a sundress and cardigan would impact his world so much?

As he carefully guided her through the steps of the slow waltz, Leonard wasn’t expecting that one year later he’d be twirling her around a different dance floor, pink chiffon swirling around her knees, at her Sweet 16; he was noticing the golden tints in her hair and the light dusting of freckles across her cheekbones. As he sat with her later on his grandmother’s porch, sharing a pitcher of lemonade, he wasn’t picturing her wearing an Ole Miss t-shirt and denim capris, bringing him snacks and sweet tea and keeping him company as he studied for the Medical College Admission Tests; he was realizing that her eyes matched the sky and that her smile was a little crooked - but it showed off her perfect teeth and deep dimples.

Leonard was already too cynical at sixteen to believe in love at first sight. He hadn’t even believed in those types of fairy tales as a child. He appreciated a pretty face, just like anyone else, but he valued intelligence and practicality over all else. And while Jocelyn Cartwright would repeatedly demonstrate both qualities, Leonard had never before been so enthralled by beauty alone, nor by the passion that the girl also possessed in abundance.

In six weeks, when the dancing lessons were over and Leonard asked Mr. Cartwright if he could date his daughter, he wasn’t preparing for years later, when he would sit in the Cartwright patriarch’s personal study and ask the older man for Jocelyn’s hand in marriage. At that moment, he was just wanting permission to keep seeing the charming young lady who’d so firmly wrapped him around her finger - and preferably in a more romantic setting than his grandmother’s parlor.

When they went on their first date, attending an outdoor movie theater then sitting in the park with ice cream cones and joking about the plot, Leonard wasn’t imagining her in a white satin dress walking down an aisle toward him, as his bow tie suddenly felt too tight and his cheeks hurt because he couldn’t stop smiling; all he was trying to do was think up ways to make her laugh like that again. And when he finally kissed her, months later, he wasn’t looking ahead to the day that she would hold his hand in a crushing grip during the moment that would come to define him as a person, bringing into the world the being that would bring meaning to every minute of his existence and make every day of his life worthwhile: his daughter. No, when Leonard McCoy first kissed Jocelyn Cartwright, all he was thinking about what that her lips felt soft, that her body felt so good pressed up against his, and that his arms wrapped around her felt like they’d finally found where they truly belonged.

Leonard never thanked his grandmother before she died for introducing him to Jocelyn. He should have. He never would have met the mother of his child if it hadn’t been for an etiquette class with an uneven number of students. But years later, as he stood in a cemetery in the Georgia heat, watching his father’s casket lower into the ground, Jocelyn’s hand held in his as she cried the tears that he wouldn’t allow himself to cry, he wasn’t anticipating a future of hurtful words, vicious accusations, and slammed doors; he just wanted to go home, kiss his wife and child goodnight, and then drink himself to sleep.

One sunny Saturday morning, as he watched the girl of his dreams, a beauty in blue-flowered cotton, walk toward him, he never imagined that he’d have to watch her walk away.


End file.
